It had taken time.
Kaelira had spoken with Virelya under moon-red leaves, pleading for Aurenya's passage. The ancient tree did not tremble nor burn. Its silence was consent enough. But after Kaelira left, Virelya whispered, unseen and alone:
"Love always requires sacrifice. But it should be freely given. This time, my child... it will be too much for you to bear. But I cannot stop the thread of fate."
A rift opened at the edge of Aethelgard, where the old gate once stood—its stones long cracked, its arch overtaken by ivy. Alden stood alone, far from his encampment. He had given strict orders: no one was to follow. This moment wasn't for soldiers or spies.
He felt it before he saw it.
The air shimmered—then tore like silk in water.
She stepped through.
With silence—so complete it seemed to pause the wind.
One breath she was in Antithesis, fingers curled around golden leaves. The next, the world had changed.
A rush of sensation hit her.
The sky overhead—so wide, and whole. Blue, not like water or fire, but like... glass painted with light.
And the ground—stone, crushed and shaped into roads. Dead earth. No trees. No song. The silence here was a kind of scream.
She staggered.
And then she saw him.
Alden.
Standing at the edge of the garden he'd prepared for weeks. Every plant hand-grown, every illusion spell layered so that, just in case someone saw her—they would only see a girl. A mortal girl.
But as he looked at her now, he saw everything.
Wings like flame, barely tucked behind her back. Hair flickering faintly with heat and light. And her eyes—eyes that had never seen a sky like this—wide, startled, filled with a strange kind of awe.
"Aurenya..." he breathed, stepping forward.
She blinked at him, dazed. "Your world is loud."
He almost laughed—but it caught in his throat. He was too struck to speak, suddenly terrified that this was a dream. That she would vanish again.
But she didn't. Instead, she stepped forward on bare feet, as if unsure the ground would hold her.
Aurenya.
Wings made of riverfire unfurled behind her. Her feet barely touched the earth. Her skin caught the dull morning like a mirror. Her eyes held starlight.
For a moment, Alden couldn't move. There were no words for what he saw.
She looked at him.
He took one step forward, heart racing, and held out the locket.
She touched it gently, then lowered her head. Alden put it on her, and she accepted it without hesitation.
As the locket settled around her throat, her radiant wings instantly faded from view. Her skin lost its ethereal luminescence, and her impossible beauty dimmed to something that wouldn't shatter mortal minds. She looked human—breathtakingly lovely, but human.
Even diminished by the enchantment, she was the most beautiful woman Alden had ever seen.
She looked down at herself, flexing her fingers, then up at him.
"Do I look like one of you now?" she asked.
Alden stared, speechless. Her beauty was still beyond reason—just... bearable now. No longer the kind that would drive a man mad. But close.
"You look," he said, his voice rough, "like a normal human now."
Aurenya blinked slowly, then smiled.
"The sky here isn't split. It's very unfamiliar."
He had no answer. Her gaze drifted back to him.
"But you're here," she said softly. "So it's not so frightening."
And just like that, he forgot every speech he had rehearsed. Every line. Every phrase.
Instead, he whispered like a man who'd waited lifetimes:
"You came?"
Aurenya smiled, unsure why he would ask the obvious.
And when she reached out and touched his hand, the thread between them didn't shimmer.
It burned.
Virelya's gift had been for those parted by distance yet still bound to her realm. But here, on mortal soil, her sight could no longer follow. The thread thinned, heat replacing the quiet hum. The bridge between them — that soft, distant magic — was gone. And with it, the certainty that they could always find each other.
---
Alden brought Aurenya home—to Leonhelm, the heart of the empire.
Not the palace. That was far too visible, far too full of eyes.
He kept her in his personal estate on the eastern wing of the city, a place surrounded by high walls and old gardens. The estate had belonged to his mother once—before her death. Few entered now, and fewer asked questions when the gates remained shut.
There, Aurenya walked the marble halls barefoot, her hair braided by maids who were told she was a distant noblewoman under Alden's protection.
Had Elara still been alive, she would have been overjoyed — and would have insisted on doing everything for Aurenya herself. She died a few years back due to old age.
Aurenya never left the estate without Alden. And when she did, she wore a hood, and he kept his guards far back.
Still, whispers grew.
"Who is she?"
"A mistress?"
"A mage's daughter from the borderlands?"
In the city's inner court, nobles watched her from afar—some with awe, others with unease. She didn't speak like a commoner, nor did she act like one. But neither did she seem like a noble.
Lady Emmelyne, daughter of duke Viremont, noticed most of all.
Once promised to Alden, she had always considered herself his future empress. That future now shimmered with cracks each time she saw him at festivals, his arm around a girl no one could name.
"She's not from any house," Emmelyne whispered to her cousin, watching from a balcony. "Not from any country I know."
"She's beautiful," her cousin murmured. "Too beautiful."
Emmelyne's smile was tight as she lit the edge of the gossip parchment—one of many speculating about Alden's secret lover. The flame licked upward, curling the paper to ash in her fingers.
"So is a flame," she said coolly, "and look what it does to paper."
---
For a precious span of time, Alden and Aurenya lived as if the world was kind. Aurenya marveled at everything—the taste of bread, the smell of rain, the feeling of wind that didn't carry celestial song. Alden showed her markets where merchants hawked their wares, theaters where players brought stories to life, gardens where flowers bloomed and died in endless cycles.
She learned to dance, her otherworldly grace translated into mortal movement. She laughed at street performers and wept at sunsets. Every moment of wonder in her golden eyes reminded Alden why he had spent years perfecting the magic that made this possible.
The necklace never came off. It had become part of her, its enchantment so seamlessly woven that even she sometimes forgot what lay hidden beneath its glamour.
But peace, like spring, was fleeting.
---
When the fighting against the dark elves grew beyond mere border skirmishes, the emperor summoned Alden—as they had agreed long before. As crown prince and general of the Leonhelm Empire, Alden had no choice but to lead the army into battle and uphold his vow to protect the realm.
In the courtyard, beneath a sky heavy with gathering clouds, he stood before Aurenya. Her mortal-seeming hand clutched the necklace at her throat—the same one that dimmed her light, that made her look like one of them.
"I'll return," he told her gently. "Be careful. Remember everything I told you. My people will keep you safe."
She looked at him with quiet sadness. "I want to go with you."
"You can't," Alden said, more firmly this time. "It's too dangerous."
"I can't return to Antithesis either. The gate won't open," she whispered. "What would I even do here?"
They had spoken of this before—many times. The gate between worlds was sealed. She was trapped, caught between two homes that no longer welcomed her.
Alden reached for her hand and held it a moment longer than necessary. "Then stay here. Trust only those I've named. Be cautious." Then added in whisper, "This world is not always kind to what it doesn't understand."
Aurenya nodded, but her eyes remained distant.
He gave her a final glance as he mounted his horse. And as he rode away, he looked back only once.
She stood with her hand raised in farewell—silent, still. But something in her gaze unsettled him. A stillness that wasn't peace.
A shadow of a doom neither of them could name.
He had warned her of many dangers.
He told her to guard her looks. To hide her nature. To avoid curious eyes and suspicious nobles.
But he forgot to warn her about the people he trusted.
And that would be his gravest mistake.
He had no way of knowing it would be the last time he saw her as she was.